


Snakes & Ladders

by FrozenWings



Series: Game Night with Frohana [3]
Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Because they probably didn't have Snakes & Ladders in 1840's Norway, Board Games, Cheating, Chutes and Ladders, Fluff, Frohana (Disney), Game Night, Gen, Post-Frozen (2013), Pre-Frozen 2 (2019), Slight Anachronism, fluffy fluffy fluff, snow sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:13:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27084688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrozenWings/pseuds/FrozenWings
Summary: Another rainy Sunday in Arendelle Castle, another afternoon filled with board games. And this time, Elsa has found something that Anna can'tpossiblycheat at.You'd think she'd know by now to not underestimate the princess...
Relationships: Anna & Elsa & Kristoff, Anna & Elsa (Disney)
Series: Game Night with Frohana [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1853851
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Snakes & Ladders

**Author's Note:**

> Written early December 2019 (before I saw _Frozen 2_ ).
> 
> Well, that's the last time I say that I'll try and be quicker about getting something up. If anyone's still here following along with this series, thank you so much for your patience; I hope you'll find it well rewarded!

The steady *tap-tap* of rain against glass echoed through the halls of Arendelle castle, keeping time with the *click-click* of ice-forged heels as the queen of the realm navigated the corridors. Despite the gloomy weather, there was a smile on Elsa’s face, for this particular rainy afternoon was a rainy Sunday afternoon, and she was free to do as she wished. And today, her wishes had to do with the flat wooden box tucked under her arm, a foolproof plan, and a certain redheaded princess.

“Oh, hey Elsa!” Anna greeted as her sister entered the den, looking up from the book in her lap. She was sprawled out on the chaise, feet on on of the arms (muddy feet, Elsa noticed with a wince) and leaning back against Kristoff. Both people looked slightly damp, and Anna’s skirt was covered in brown spots that Elsa was sure weren’t there earlier.

Her disdain must have shown on her face, because Anna proceeded to explain. “We just came in from the stables."

“And someone,” contributed Kristoff in a wry tone, “thought it’d be a good idea to jump in every mud puddle she saw.” 

“Hey!” Anna countered, elbowing him in the ribs with a grin, to which he responded by playfully shoving her back. 

Elsa smiled fondly at their antics, momentarily forgetting why she sought the couple out. Fortunately, Anna noticed the box under her sister’s arm. “What do you have there, Elsa?” she asked, straightening up and ceasing the impromptu shoving match. 

“Oh,” said Elsa, suddenly remembering her original purpose and producing the faded container from where it had been pinned against her side, eyes twinkling. “Since today’s not a good day for outdoor activities,” (Anna started to open her mouth to extoll the benefits of puddle jumping, but thought better of it after a nudge from Kristoff), “I thought we could play a board game.” 

“Not chess!” Anna exclaimed, trying and failing to keep the whiny groan out of her voice. 

“Don't be so dramatic, Anna.” Elsa chided, making her way to the coffee table and beginning to unpack the box. “Chess is a beautiful game of strategy, not an instrument of torture." (the mumbled "Whatever you say, sis" from the chaise that was no doubt accompanied by an eyeroll was ignored) "But, no, that's not what I was about to suggest. After all," she leveled Anna with a stern look that was too exaggerated to be meaningful, "I don’t particularly feel like giving myself a headache today.”

That elicited a sheepish giggle from the princess, who set aside the book in favor of standing, noisily stretching, and joining her sister by the hearth. A wooden game board was produced, painted in colors that had faded with time but were still bright enough to retain their jewel-like appearance. Elsa offered it to Anna, who proceeded to turn it this way and that, carefully examining the images on the wood.

“I found our old snakes and ladders game,” Elsa said, beaming as Anna’s eyes lit up in recognition at the childhood diversion, “and thought it’d be fun to play a round.” 

“Gee, Elsa, that sounds like fun, but isn’t this game for little kids?” Anna asked, brows furrowed in confusion.

“No,” Elsa stated coolly. “It’s a game with rules that are so basic it’s impossible to cheat.” 

At that, both Anna and Kristoff snapped to attention, instantly realizing that Elsa was simultaneously referencing the chess/checkers incident from the last time it rained like this and issuing a challenge to her sister, daring her to play a board game while adhering to the rules. Never one to back down from a challenge, Anna dropped herself to the floor and the board onto the table, the latter landing with a hollow *thunk.* 

“Alright, then, set ‘em up!” she fairly shouted, rubbing her hands together in anticipation. 

“Kristoff, will you join us?” Elsa asked as she placed a red pawn next to the blue one already on the ‘start’ square.

“I’ve never really played before...” Kristoff began, letting his sentence trail off as he moved to sit at one of the short ends of the table and surveyed the board. It was covered in tiny pictures of boys and girls doing a variety of actions, some nice and others not so nice (was that one actually getting spanked?). Each picture-filled square was connected to another by way of either ladders or things he assumed (judging by the name Elsa had said a moment ago) were supposed to be snakes, a far cry from the two-toned chess/checkerboard he was used to.

“It’s simple,” Elsa began as Anna rummaged in the box for a die. “You roll the die and move your piece around the board. When you land on a picture of good behavior, you move forward; landing on bad behavior results in you moving backwards. The first person to reach the final square wins.” 

“So, are you in?” Anna asked, having located the elusive die. 

“I think I’ll just watch this time,” Kristoff replied cautiously. This looked more like didactic instruction than an actual game, leading him to wonder if such so-called 'games' were a part of growing up royal (if so, he’d take being raised by trolls in the wilderness any day). Plus he had a feeling that _watching_ the two girls compete with one another would be infinitely more amusing (and safer) than playing. 

“Suit yourself,” Anna replied with a shrug, already shaking the die. “I’ll go first, then!” With that, she threw the die and the game begun.

The first couple of turns were uneventful. Each sister rolled the die and moved their piece without incident, up until Anna landed on a picture of a girl staring out a window instead of attending to her tutor. When she passed the die to Elsa as though her turn was finished, the queen raised an eyebrow with a smirk.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked coyly. 

“What?” Anna replied, obviously feigning confusion. 

“You landed on a snake. Move your piece down a row.” 

“Why would I do that?” Anna countered. 

“Because those are the rules, whether you like them or not.” Elsa stated in a matter-of-fact way. “Bad behavior moves down.” 

“Whose to say she’s doing anything wrong?” Anna countered defensively. 

“She isn’t paying attention to her studies!” Elsa gestured with vexation at the painted girl on the board, the motion sending a wispy breeze of arctic air towards Kristoff (it had barely started, and not playing this game was starting to look like his best decision of the month).

“On the contrary, sister dear: she is playing very close attention to that.” Anna jabbed her finger onto the wood, landing on a songbird blithely singing out the window. “Who are we to tell her that God’s creatures aren’t worth paying attention to? Besides, Mama always said that the study of the natural world was a noble pursuit. You aren't implying Mama was wrong, are you?” 

Kristoff bit back his laughter, both at Anna’s words and the innocent, wide-eyed expression she used to accentuate them, hand to her chest as though the thought of doing anything to to dishonor the late queen's words physically pained her. Elsa looked like she was going to argue further, but Anna batted her doe-like lashes at her once, twice, three times, and the queen was undone. 

“Fine,” she heaved an exasperated sigh. “You can stay, but just this once!” With that, she rolled the die and took her turn as usual. 

Nothing much happened until Anna landed on a square that was the base of a slide. Without a word, she moved her piece up the snake, advancing about a dozen squares in the process.

“Anna! What are you doing!” Elsa exclaimed, eyes close to bulging out of her head. 

“Moving up, what does it look like?” Anna replied as though nothing unusual had happened. 

“You can’t do that! You can only go up ladders!”

“Normally.” Anna agreed with a quick nod of her head. “But this particular child has done a good deed and deserves to be rewarded.” 

Elsa and Kristoff leaned down to study the images in question: a boy getting his rear end severely spanked was at the foot (tail?) of the snake, and a child throwing a brick through a window, complete with glass shards flying, at the head.

“In what lifetime does one reward a child by allowing them to break a window?!?” Elsa asked, incredulous.

“Yeah, feistypants, even I know that doesn’t make sense,” Kristoff concurred. 

“This child’s brother,” Anna began dramatically, “Was wrongfully spanked and he is enacting sweet justice on the man who wronged him.” 

“That is not what happened!” Elsa huffed, a small patch of ice forming beneath her hands on the table.

“Oh, so you wouldn’t do the same for me if I was wrongfully accused and punished?” Anna challenged, eyeing Elsa with narrowed gaze.

Kristoff watched Elsa’s face change expressions no less than five times in as many seconds as she stammered out, “Well...I...the thing is...FINE, I WOULD!” (Kristoff made a mental note to never wrongfully accuse his girlfriend lest he find icy bricks flying through his window). 

Grinning triumphantly, Anna handed her sister the die and watched as frost-coated fingers gave it a hearty shake. _Two can play at this game,_ the queen thought to herself as the die bounced and rolled to a stop.

A four brought Elsa’s blue pawn to a snake’s head, but, like her sister before her, she made no move to slide down to its tail. “He-ey, El-sa...Look where you landed!” Anna said in a singsong voice, wearing a smug look. 

“Square 24,” Elsa replied flatly, passing the die to Anna. 

“A SNAKE!!” Anna shouted, slamming the table for emphasis before thrusting a finger at the queen. “Now you need to go back!”

“No I don’t.” Elsa stated calmly, ignoring Anna’s display. 

“Why not, Miss always-plays-by-the-rules?” Anna argued, arms crossed in front of her chest. 

“Whose to say he’s doing anything wrong?”

“Oh, come on Elsa,” Anna indicated the picture on the board of a little boy tramping through the snow sans coat, hats, and boots. "You won’t so much as let me stick my hand out the window without bundling up in the winter. You can’t possibly say he’s not doing something wrong!”

“Is it a problem if I go out in the snow without a coat?” Elsa countered, the picture of neutrality. 

Anna blinked processing what her sister just said. “Well, no, but...whose to say he has snow magic?”

“Whose to say he doesn’t?”

Anna felt her face growing hot, both from Elsa’s rather sound argument and Kristoff’s poorly concealed snickers at her getting a taste of her own medicine. “Fine,” she finally decided. “If you won’t move it back, I’ll do it.” She reached across the board and gripped the piece. “I mean, it’s only a few-what the heck?!?” 

To her shock, Elsa’s piece didn’t budge when she attempted to lift it; tries at sliding it also proved to be futile. A closer look revealed that the piece was stuck fast to the game board by a nearly invisible layer of ice. Surprisingly strong ice, she realized with a scowl as she nearly upended the board in an effort to move it.

Anna turned incensed fire-filled teal eyes on her smirking sister's laughing blue ones, molten enough to melt the ice of the latter's dress. Clearly, her elder had every intention of cheating right along with her, giving the princess two choices: play by the rules like a civilized person, or continue cheating, knowing that Elsa would very well turn ever rule-bending tactic against her. 

Today, Anna decided, she was not a civilized person.

Thus the childhood game of morality that was Snakes and Ladders devolved into a strange sort of ethical debate of increasingly absurd proportions. Kristoff could only watch with amusement as each sister took turns arguing as to why they should be allowed to move up or outright ignore snakes and why their opponent should move down a ladder. He found himself continually suppressing bursts of laughter as the two royals, in turn, explained their contrived reasoning in exacting detail in an effort to move the pawn in question as they wished. 

It was quite the educational experience. Never before had Kristoff guessed that one could find just cause in pulling a cat’s tail (according to Anna) or fault in watering and tending to a plant (so sayeth the queen). The mountain man supposed he should try and put a stop to the game (or at least rein it in), but, truth be told, this was just too much fun to watch. Besides, he was personally hoping someone would land on square sixty-three, which depicted a girl throwing a rock at a bluebird; he would love to hear either player try and justify that.

“Hey, guys! Watch’a doin?” 

Kristoff looked away from Elsa’s relatively uncreative explanation as to why ignoring a ‘thin ice’ sign was not a bad idea as far as she was concerned (“Why do you keep landing on winter-themed squares?!?” Anna had protested upon Elsa’s landing there) to see Olaf waddling into the room, looking at the game board and pawns with bright, delighted eyes.

“Oh, hey Olaf,” Kristoff greeted the snowman while Anna muttered something about the die being biased as she gave it a unnecessarily violent shake. “Anna and Elsa are playing a board game.” _Or something like playing a board game._

“Ooohh, that sound like fun! Are you playing too?”

“Not this time,” Kristoff responded as Anna’s piece landed on a blank square and Elsa reached for the die, surreptitiously coating one side in a layer of ice to weight it (he opted to stay quiet on the matter, though to his credit he did debate intervening for a full three seconds before deciding that the snow drift he would no doubt find himself under if he said something was worth avoiding). “I’m having fun just watching.” 

“You know,” Olaf answered cheerfully, “I’ve never done ‘just watching!’ Can I do that too?”

“Sure,” Kristoff replied, patting the ground next to him invitingly. With that, the snowman plunked himself on the floor next to Kristoff, watching intently as Elsa’s piece once again moved six squares and Anna (after complaining that Elsa kept rolling ‘good’ numbers) began her turn . 

Olaf watched quietly alongside Kristoff, snowy brow furrowed in concentration as he attempted to follow the queen and princess’s frequent debates. “So,” he finally asked Kristoff, words coming slowly as the gears in his frosty mind turned. “The point of the game is to explain why bad behavior is good and good behavior is bad?”

“Uh....” Kristoff looked over at Anna, who was currently stating that the little boy was swiping a pie off someone’s windowsill because he and his siblings were destitute and on the verge of starvation. “I guess so.” 

“What an interesting game!” Olaf responded cheerily before getting up and walking out of the room, humming to himself. 

Kristoff watched him leave, somehow feeling disconcerted about why Olaf had left so suddenly and wondering where he was off to. _I should probably go after him._ he thought, frowning. Just then, however, Elsa (who had forgotten to weight the die this time) rolled a two which brought her to square sixty-three; naturally, Kristoff just _had_ to stay.

_**Forty-five minutes later...** _

“YES!!! A THREE!!! I WIN!!!” Anna crowed, nearly turning her sister and boyfriend deaf in the meanwhile. With exaggerated movements (and more force than was called for), her pawn hopped the final three squares before landing with a loud ***clunk*** on square one-hundred. “IN YOUR FACE, CHEATER!!!” She shouted, leaning across the table. 

“Anna, that’s uncalled for,” Elsa stated, her tone matching the frost coating her fingers as she began packing up the game. “A lady doesn’t gloat. And she certainly doesn’t do that!” 

‘That’ was jumping around the sitting room, whooping and hollering at the top of her lungs. “I WON! I WON! HA HA! I’M THE CHAMPION OF SNAKES AND LADDERS!!!” Kristoff finally gave up holding back his laughter and collapsed on the rug, holding his sides as he guffawed, both at Anna’s victory antics and Elsa’s annoyed eye rolls and perturbed expression. His laughter came even harder when Anna’s self-congratulatory shouts became a series of startled yelps and “ELSA, YOU STINKER!!” as 'the stinker' sent a stream of especially cold snowflakes down the back of her sister’s dress to swirl around her middle, adroitly dodging the latter’s attempts to remove them.

The cacophony within the room came to an abrupt halt, though, when a high-pitched scream cut through the air. The trio all instantly froze (and, courtesy of the queen, the coffee table did too) as a pair of voices echoed loudly throughout the previously silent hallways.

“GET BACK HERE, YOU COLD-HEARTED COOKIE THIEF!”

“BUT I SAID I’M DESTITUTE SO THIS DOESN’T COUNT AS STEALING!”

In a blink, both Anna and Elsa tore from the room, shouting as they went.

“OLAF, WAIT! THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT!”

“YOU CAN’T JUST TAKE COOKIES, NO MATTER WHAT ANNA SAYS!”

Kristoff rose and followed after the sisters (an easy task considering the trail of snowflakes left in the queen’s wake), curious to watch what happened next, but not before double-checking that the game was in order, board and pawns and slightly-frosty die in their places.

Something told him another round was in store that afternoon, a four-player one with a very impressionable snowman and rule-abiding mountaineer joining the scheming queen and princess, one that made use of the game’s moralizing properties and was devoid of wrongfully spanked boys, destitute pie thieves, and girls pelting bluebirds without consequence. If he were a betting man, though, he'd put money on it being no less interesting.

**Author's Note:**

> Because how could it not be? ;)
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! This is one of my favorite _Frozen_ pieces that I’ve written; my siblings and I used to joke about ways to move up chutes and down ladders, so I had a lot of fun thinking of ways for Anna and Elsa to do the same. Plus, I enjoyed being able to slip in a little _Over the Garden Wall_ Easter egg. Did anyone catch it?
> 
> Again, thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it; please consider leaving a kudos or comment if you did. Until next time!


End file.
